Toon-In Talk Episode 23: Interview with Kristy Scanlan

Hello and welcome to twenty-third episode of Fanboy Nation’s Toon-In-Talk, your rendezvous for animation interviews. It’s also time for the third round of interviews for the Ladies of Animation Month, Whitney Grace’s yearly tribute to women who work in the animation industry and mission to inspire girls to pursue their animated ambitions. Kirsty Scanlan is the co-president of the Women in Animation organization. Kirsty fell into animation when she worked at Threshold Entertainment and fell in love with the medium. She is currently Technicolor’s Vice President of Business Development for Technicolor’s Animation and Games group. Whitney and Kristy discuss Kristy’s career the current state of women in the animation industry, and their hopes for the future.

Kristy Scanlan entered the entertainment industry right of college and worked in live action script development, but when she worked at Threshold Entertainment they had an animation studio. She became more involved in the animation side of the studio and fell in love with it.

When Kristy was at Threshold Entertainment, she worked on projects for Lego, Marvel, DC, and some theme parks.

She currently works at Technicolor and is in charge of business development for their studio in Bangalore, India.

One of the services her studio provides is CG outsourcing and her clients include DreamWorks, Nickelodeon, Electronic Arts, Activision, Rockstar Games, Capcom, 2K, Sony Computer Entertainment.

Kristy’s other job was helping revamp the Women In Animation organization to give it new life and help women launch their careers in the animation industry, including networking, educational seminars, and giving them a voice.

70% of women in art schools want to become animators, but only 20% actually work in the animation industry.

Women In Animation’s goal is to have a 50/50 workforce in the animation industry by 2025.

Women In Animation has made strong movements since the organization’s revamp in October 2013.

The entire goal is to empower women, get jobs, and succeed in a field usually dominated my men.

Whitney and Kristy discuss old-fashioned hiring practices and how they could evolve in the future.

Women In Animation is for more diversity not only in the animation industry, but also diversity in culture as a whole.

Self-doubt is one of the biggest barriers that women face.

Kristy shares her experience about females working in the animation industry. She says that things have improved since the 1950s, but there is a whole lot of room for improvement.

Whitney points out that Lotte Reiniger, the first female animation director in the world, is usually a footnote in history books.